Nocturnal Animals

Like it, love it or hate it, La La Land is continuing its major sweep of awards season, unsurprisingly. After winning a record-breaking seven Golden Globes on Sunday night, the Damien Chazelle romance musical has come out on top of the 2017 British Academy of Film and Television Awards with 11 nominations. The surprising bits of the BAFTA announcement though, were the few very nominations given to its main competitors.

Michael Shannon might be the busiest actor of our time. In 2016 alone he starred in 10 films, including his Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice corpse cameo and two unreleased films from the Tribeca Film Festival. Shannon continued his collaboration with Jeff Nichols with Midnight Special and Loving, he played Elvis Presley opposite Kevin Spacey’s President Nixon, he played a hilarious Texas sheriff in Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals, and reunited with Werner Herzog for Salt and Fire. And after all that, he even found time to put together the best red carpet outfit of all time.

Another year, another wacky and uncertain awards season. Monday morning brought the 2017 Golden Globe nominations, including a handful of odd choices and snubs. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association was more wooed by Andrew Garfield’s performance in Hacksaw Ridge than Silence, giving the Mel Gibson war drama three nods and Martin Scorsese’s religious period piece zero. Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals got three nods (not including one for Michael Shannon’s critically praised performance), and Deadpool earned for Best Picture Comedy/Musical and Best Actor nominations. It will be a weird awards season indeed.

When you hear that Tom Ford is directing a movie, you know for sure that it’s going to be stylish. Nocturnal Animals is his first feature since 2009’s A Single Man, and, for one, thing it’s actually gorgeous to look at. But what lies beneath the surface is a sexy, nasty tale of two former lovers in a battle for supremacy and revenge. While Nocturnal Animals has the elements of a thriller a la Gone Girl, like classic noirs that came before it, it’s much more a love story with thrilling aspects.

After premiering at the Venice Film Festival and receiving its second prize, and screening at this year’s TIFF, Nocturnal Animals is finally heading to theaters. The film stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Amy Adams as two dangerously stylish divorcees who reconnect after he publishes a violent and upsetting book that is, for some reason, dedicated to her.

Fresh from its premiere at the Venice Film Festival (where it won the second place trophy) and screenings at the Toronto Film Festival, here is the trailer for Nocturnal Animals, the newest from from fashion designer and director Tom Ford. His follow-up to his critically acclaimed 2009 film A Single Man features an excellent cast, with Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal as the two leads. Adams plays an art gallery owner who receives a manuscript from her ex-husband (Gyllenhaal) in which the character clearly inspired by her (and played by Isla Fisher in films from the book-within-the-film) meets a horrible fate.

There’s no doubting Tom Ford has an impeccable eye. The fashion designer-cum-film director knows how to dress people, and in his second feature Nocturnal Animals, he wastes no opportunity to aestheticize the sadness and cynicism of his well dressed cast.

Tom Ford’s long-awaited follow-up to A Single Man just premiered at TIFF, and the early reactions from critics have been rather glowing — that’s bittersweet news for fans of Ford, who will have to wait just a little longer to see the fashion designer and director’s latest project, Nocturnal Animals. Thankfully, these intriguingly stylish new character posters will help bide the time (kind of) until we can at least see the first trailer.

Y’know those back to school ads for Staples? The ones that repurpose the Christmas standard “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” to celebrate children going back class? I always hated those ads as a kid. Going back to school was not a time to celebrate. It was a time for grief and mourning.

With a summer movie season as bad as this one, the closer we get to fall festivals, the better. In a little over a month we’ll get our first look at the the fall movie season when the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival kicks off on September 8. TIFF is the major fall festival, following Venice and Telluride, that gives us our first glimpse at major awards season players.